Waiting for end of Stage 4

This morning we dropped off the team's bikes up a big hill at a castle that was huge and still largely intact, was probably the best spot we've been to so far, but it was at 2am in the morning. Would have loved to have seen it in the daylight.

The teams were trekking to there, and 'storming the castle' by abseiling up one of the walls. Would have been fabulous.

We're now waiting at TA4 for the leading teams to arrive.

We are expecting lots of teams in by 9pm, so they can catch some sleep in transition before the next cutoff at midnight tonight, although this 105km MTB leg is taking longer than I think people expected.

Several of the teams' GPS don't seem to have reported for some time, so it's a bit hard to know where things are at. The leaderboard as at the end of the last leg looks sort of correct. Two things that I know are wrong are that (1) Lundhags pulled out last night, and (2) Nga Rakau haven't been credited with the CPs from the big MTB yesterday at this stage, several of which they definitely did get.

At this stage I think Nga Rakau are intending to short cut the first part of stage 5. Short-cutting doesn't put you out of the race, it just means you don't have the opportunity to get the CPs on that leg. The stage begins with a short trek to the river, then a 45km paddle. Given that the paddle yesterday was about 25km, and took about 7 hours, this paddle doesn't look like a good option, with the race notes saying it includes a lake with 'tricky navigation, especially at night' (which it will be), and reportedly includes a 2km portage. The Portugese boys who are transporting the plastic kayaks around tell us the teams won't be able to use the kayak trolleys for that portage because the ground is too rocky. Carrying those things for 2kms could be ugly.

The weather forecast for today was light rain (which didn't happen, actually it was a beautiful day), and more rain for tomorrow and Saturday. If that eventuates, it will make things even tougher for the last day.